Myths and legends:
The stories behind the music
Musicologist Georg Rudiger has taken a closer look at the Klosters Music programme. Today: Joseph Haydn’s “Nelson” Mass and Ludwig van Beethoven’s overture to “Coriolan” (opening concert).
The Kyrie begins sombrely. Trumpets and timpani play a fanfare rhythm on one note. This is accompanied by harsh chords in the strings. Completed on 31 August 1798, the mass Hob. XXII: 11 in D minor by Joseph Haydn, is actually called “Missa in angustiis”, i.e. “Mass in distress”. It was composed during the Napoleonic Wars. Haydn’s 40-minute work is better known under the name “Nelson” Mass. The British admiral Horatio Nelson had defeated the French troops at the naval battle of Aboukir (Egypt) in August 1798, and on his way home two years later, he passed through Eisenstadt in Burgenland, where Joseph Haydn had composed the mass for his patron Prince Esterhazy and now met the war hero in person. Whether Haydn already knew about Nelson’s victory when he composed it is more than questionable. In the transition from the Benedictus to the Osanna, the mass sounds military and triumphant for a few bars when the fanfares from the beginning return in the trumpets in triplet form and the timpani join in with the striking rhythm.
Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Coriolan” overture, composed in 1807, is also somewhat martial. The drama of the same name by Heinrich von Collin (1802) tells the story of the outcast Roman general Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus, who returns to his home town of Rome with a hostile army where he seeks revenge and fights the plebeians. Only his wife and his mother can stop him from taking vengeance – in the end he throws himself on his own sword. Beethoven composed his overture in sonata form, but Coriolanus’ story makes itself felt. The harsh chords at the beginning emphasise the grim character of the patrician, while the first theme with its restless quavers and interspersed general pauses creates a menacing atmosphere. The gentleness of the women who are trying to calm him can be heard in the legato theme in the strings, which is later ennobled by the woodwind instruments. The overture oscillates between excitement and calm, between abruptness and cantabile quality, before the restless first theme loses all energy at the end.Three heartbeats, audible in the pizzicato of the strings – and the overture is over. And Coriolanus is dead.